A viscoelastic model of a breast phantom for real-time palpation

Palpation of soft tissues helps to diagnose varying diseases within the tissues. Using a phantom, the current method of training palpation lacks for feedback of the training. Similar to a robot-assisted surgical system, a virtual reality (VR) system could be potential for such training due to its interactive nature. In such a VR system, studies revealed the observation that the human perception of objects is insensitive to subtle discrepancies in a simulation. Based upon this observation, we propose a real-time viscoelastic model of a breast phantom (as soft tissues). The model consists of a surface membrane and an inside gel. We evaluate this model through a comparison with a Finite Element Method (FEM) model, featuring physical parameters and different force contacts. The results show that the model can handle multi vertex force contact on an arbitrary location and yields reasonable accurate deformation compared to the FEM model.